"On my part, I remain committed to the process of dialogue. It is my firm belief that dialogue and a willingness to look with honesty and clarity at the reality of Tibet can lead us to a viable solution."

FACTBOX: China's leaders and protest movement in 1989

June 2, 2009

Mon Jun 1, 2009

(Reuters) - China's 1989 pro-democracy movement split the Communist Party
leadership and triggered a power struggle that ended in a bloody crackdown
on student protesters in the pre-dawn hours of June 4 that year.

Following are brief profiles of government leaders and key members of the
protest movement at the time:

* DENG XIAOPING, then the power behind the throne in China, sent in tanks
and troops to crush the student-led demonstrations for democracy centered on
Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He died on February 19, 1997, aged 92, after
reviving the economy with a dramatic tour of the south in 1992.

* ZHAO ZIYANG was toppled as China's Communist Party chief after challenging
Deng's decision to crush the protests. Zhao died in Beijing in 2005, after
15 years under house arrest. His secret memoirs were published last month.

* JIANG ZEMIN rose from Communist Party boss of Shanghai, where he ended
parallel protests without bloodshed, to oust Zhao as national Party chief in
1989. Jiang held on to power for 13 years before retiring in 2002.

* LI PENG is known as the "Butcher of Beijing" for declaring martial law on
national television days before the crackdown. Reviled by many, Li remained
premier until 1998. Writing in retirement, Li has reportedly sought to clear
his name, but the Party has banned publication of his memoirs.

* HU JINTAO, now China's top leader, was Party secretary in Tibet in 1989.
He declared martial law in Lhasa in March 1989, following clashes between
Tibetan protesters and police.

* WEN JIABAO, Zhao's chief of staff, accompanied him to Tiananmen Square
when Zhao tearfully appealed to students to leave. Zhao was ousted, but Wen
became premier in 2003.

* BAO TONG, Zhao's top aide, was the most senior official jailed for
sympathizing with the protesters. Still under constant police surveillance,
he is now a critic of China's human rights record and the slow pace of
political reform.

* WANG DAN, then a 20-year-old Peking University history major, was a
high-profile student leader. Jailed twice, he was released into exile in
1998. Wang is now a guest researcher at Oxford University and chairman of
the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association. He has not been allowed back
to China.

* CHAI LING, then a 23-year-old psychology student, urged students to stay
in Tiananmen Square rather than accept a negotiated withdrawal in May 1989.
She escaped China after 10 months in hiding, graduated from Harvard Business
School and is now chief operating officer of Jenzabar, a Boston-based firm
that develops Internet portals for universities.

* WU'ER KAIXI, then a 21-year-old Uighur, was a hunger striker who rebuked
then-premier Li Peng on national television. He fled to France and then
studied at Harvard University, but came under attack for his extravagant
lifestyle in exile. He now works at an investment firm in Taiwan, and China
rejected his request to return to visit his aging parents.

* FANG LIZHI, a professor of astrophysics, inspired Chinese intellectuals in
the mid-1980s by declaring science should not be determined by Marxist
theory. He sought and was granted political asylum in the United States and
is now a physics professor at the University of Arizona.

* LIU XIAOBO, a literary critic, led hunger strikes on Tiananmen Square and
was subsequently jailed. He was the most prominent of the signatories of
"Charter 08," a manifesto calling for more rights, freedom of speech and
multi-party elections. He was detained before its December release and is
held in an undisclosed location near Beijing.

* HAN DONGFANG, then a 27-year-old railway worker, helped set up the Beijing
Autonomous Workers' Federation, the first independent trade union in
communist-ruled China, during the 1989 protests. Imprisoned and exiled, Han
is now in Hong Kong where he runs China Labour Bulletin, a non-governmental
organization that seeks to defend the rights of Chinese workers.